Saturday, March 18, 2006, 3/18/2006 09:16:00 AM

From the Wall Street Journal, an article summarizing the Justice Department's efforts to obtain a huge amount of data relating to searches from Google. On Tuesday, the federal judge hearing the case indicated that he would likely order Google to turn over some consumer data about Internet searches in response to the government's subpoena. The Justice Department is seeking information to bolster its efforts to show that the Chile Online Protection Act is constitutional.

Google's objections are two-fold. First, Google is concerned with protecting the privacy rights of its users. Google also has concerns, though, that release of large amounts of data regarding searches could allow its "crown-jewel" trade secrets to be reverse engineered.